Eight of the wildest and weirdest movie fan theories

Titanic celebrates the 20th anniversary of its release next month, and to mark the occasion, its director, James Cameron, has weighed in on one of the movie’s most contentious fan theories: that Rose could have moved over so Jack could get on to that floating door with her, and thus he'd have survived. Why didn't she do it?

“The answer is very simple, because it says on page 147 [of the script] that Jack dies. Very simple," Cameron tells Vanity Fair."Obviously, it was an artistic choice, the thing was just big enough to hold her, and not big enough to hold him. I think it’s all kind of silly, really, that we’re having this discussion 20 years later.”

The director went on to say that “the film is about death and separation; he had to die… things happen for artistic reasons, not physics reasons.”

Past: Medieval theologians pondered how many angels could fit/dance on the head of a pin. Today: ppl w/ too much time on their hands discuss if Jack could fit on that door alongside Rose. #Titanicpic.twitter.com/O2fJwY4D25

Titanic is a prime example of how some movie fans don't merely watch a movie - they obsess over the tiny details of a film, spotting things others would barely notice.

There's no shortage of similar fan theories about movies, put forward by people who claim to have worked out the real meaning behind a story or its characters (no matter how unlikely or bizarre it might seem).

With that in mind, here are seven other movie classics that have inspired some of the most thought-provoking, brilliant and just plain bonkers fan theories ever.

Finding Nemo (2003)

One Twitter recently user noticed something in the opening scene of the 2003 animated hit.

One of the most haunting Potter theories is that everything in the series took place in Harry's imagination; that he lost his mind while living in the cupboard under the stairs at the Dursley's, and conjured up the whole Hogwarts adventure as a coping mechanism.

One theory has it that Chris Pratt's character, Owen Grady, is the grown-up version of a child character from the original 1993 Jurassic Park movie - namely the young kid at the start of the movie who gets a memorably graphic lecture on raptors' killing strategies from Dr Alan Grant (Sam Neill).

Universal Pictures

The logic is that the kid character would roughly be the same age in 2015 as Pratt's in Jurassic World, and that Alan Grant had made such an impression on him that he devoted his life to treating raptors with love and respect.

For the record, the actor who played that young kid, Whit Hertford, thinks the theory is bogus.

What if the burglars, Harry and Marv (Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern), are not the real villains of the 1990 Christmas classic, after all? And the real bad guy orchestrating the crime is actually Kevin's Uncle Frank?

That's what one theorist believes. The explanation goes that cheapskate Frank plotted everything from Kevin (Macaulay Culkin) getting sent to the attic and missing the ride to the airport, to cutting the electricity and knocking out the alarm clocks, to arranging for the bumbling burglars to murder Kevin!

Why would he do this, you may wonder? Primarily to cash in on his brother's wealth by having him robbed. But when Frank learns that Kevin has been left at home, the theory goes - and a quick screen grab apparently hints- that Frank called Harry and Marv and instructed them to do away with Kevin because he knew too much.

Bonus criminal Home Alone fan theory: Kevin's dad, Peter (played by the late John Heard), is actually in the Mafia, which would explain the family's mysterious immense wealth and some of the characters' strange, bullying behaviour.

The evidence is compelling. For example, take the comparison between Frozen's Elsa, and The Shining's Jack Torrence. Both films have "a menacing main character who is a danger to family members, whose volatility increases after a long isolation inside a giant, ornate, high-ceilinged building in a cold, desolate landscape."

Disney

Meanwhile, Elsa's sister Anna is compared to little Danny in The Shining ("the innocent protagonist touched by the supernatural"), while snowman Olaf is seen as a newer version of the wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) from the earlier horror movie (the "goofy supporting character...who will sacrifice anything to protect our innocent protagonist from danger").

Toy Story (1995-2010):

The three Toy Story movies ( soon to be four) have inspired many fan theories over the years. Some are really sad - such as one thesis that Andy's dad (also called Andy) was the original owner of Woody, but died when little Andy was a child.

Even having one of the trilogy's writers rubbishing that theory hasn't killed off speculation.

Another theory which won't go to bed is that Andy's mum was the original owner of Jessie the cowgirl, first introduced in Toy Story 2. That would make Andy's mum 'Emily', about whom Jessie sings the heartbreaking ballad 'When She Loved Me'.

The long-running 007 franchise has generated loads of wacky and wonderful fan theories, ranging from a grisly guess as to why Bond never fathered a child with any of his romantic conquests, to a theory that Bond is merely a flashy distraction to cover the work of real MI6 agents.

One of the most persistent fan theories is that Bond is a Time Lord, which is why he has been played by multiple actors over the decades.

The most recent Bond theory has it that Bond experienced brain damage during the head-drilling sequence in Spectre (2015) - and, as a result, Daniel Craig's Bond hallucinated every other Bond adventure starring other actors in the role.

If that were true, it would be one of the biggest childhood-memory-scarring revelations since...well, yesterday, when we learned that Mario is no longer a plumber.